US Defence Officials To Learn Counting In India Before Counting The Pak F-16s Once Again
The Indian Air Force had displayed pieces of the AMRAAM missile, fired by a Pakistani F-16, as evidence. Though the red faced ( not Red Indians) American Pentagon Officials, are not ready to accept these as proofs (though India is not offering any proof to any one ) by itself, whether Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman had shot down a Pakistan Air Force F-16.
There has been a news item that Pakistan invited the US to physically count its F-16 planes after the dogfight. The US officials “ counted “ and counted but could not find a “ single” F-16 missing. Good for every one, except the family of the pilot who lost his life defending Pakistan. Though may be one day a F16 “ Crash “ will get reported soon but it will deprive the brave Pakistani pilot of his actual sacrifice.
Non bothered about the Americans Pakistanis or any one else, India has just put up the fact that its fighter pilot shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet in a dogfight in February. Now it is up to American news publication Foreign Policy to believe it or not. “Two senior US defense officials with direct knowledge of the situation told Foreign Policy that U.S. personnel recently counted Islamabad’s F-16s and found none missing,” the publication says in a report published on Thursday. Who cares, not the IAF.
The government had said that in an aerial duel on February 27 – a day after India sent fighter jets to Pakistan’s Balakot to strike a terror training camp – Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman had engaged with one of the Pakistani fighter jets that tried to target Indian military facilities and shot it down before he was hit and forced to eject.
Abhinandan Varthaman landed across the Line of Control and was in Pakistani custody for three days before he was returned to India.
According to the Foreign Policy magazine, Pakistan invited the United States to physically count its F-16 planes after the incident as part of an end-user agreement signed when the foreign military sale was finalized.
“A US count of Pakistan’s F-16 fleet has found that all the jets are present and accounted for, a direct contradiction to India’s claim that it shot down one of the fighter jets during a February clash,” Lara Seligman of the magazine reports. This clearly indicates that the Americans need to learn Counting afresh. In case required, India can teach them.
The count has been completed, and “all aircraft were present and accounted for”, an unnamed official is quoted as saying.
“It is possible that in the heat of combat, Varthaman, flying a vintage MiG-21 Bison, got a lock on the Pakistani F-16, fired, and genuinely believed he scored a hit.
But the count, conducted by U.S. authorities on the ground in Pakistan, sheds doubt on New Delhi’s version of events, suggesting that Indian authorities may have misled the international community about what happened that day,” says Foreign Policy.
How fantastic inference. They forget that Ground radars, sensors in fighter aircrafts and flying AWACS all pick up electronic signatures etc and record them. …..though in no case they are going to be shown to any one by the IAF as proof of any thing whatsoever.
The very fact that this kind of murky report has come days before voting starts for the April-May national election, shows the motive of the reporters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders have been accused by the opposition of using the Balakot air strike, which was in response to the February 14 Pulwama terror attack, in their campaign speeches.
In an intervie, the Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman had said: ”We are definitely saying that an F-16 was knocked out by us and initially, the Pakistan Prime Minister claimed that two pilots were with them. One of the pilots was ours and returned as per the norms. Who is the other pilot?”
